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ι̯

Posted: October 31st, 2011, 9:02 am
by Jonathan Robie
From Funk's grammar:
Class III: Iota Class

359. Class III constitutes a large group of verbs which add ι̯ to the verb stem to form the present tense stem. ι̯ here is a semi-vowel and occasions certain phonetic changes. A rather large subclass consists of verbs with stems ending in δ: -δι̯ between vowels becomes ζ: the present stem will therefore end in a vowel followed by ζ, the variable vowel and personal ending joined to that, e.g. ἑτοιμάζω; verb stem ἑτοιμαζ-. In the other tense stems, δ before σ (future, aorist) and κ (perfect) disappears, δ before μ (perfect middle) and θ (aorist passive) becomes σ.
Tell me about ι̯. Is this a theoretical construct that is useful to explain morphological patterns, or something that once existed in Greek?

Re: ι̯

Posted: October 31st, 2011, 9:29 am
by Stephen Carlson
I'd say it's both. We don't have direct literary or epigraphic evidence for it (except intervocalically in Linear B), but sister Indo-European languages sometimes attest the *y.

Re: ι̯

Posted: October 31st, 2011, 1:25 pm
by cwconrad
Stephen Carlson wrote:I'd say it's both. We don't have direct literary or epigraphic evidence for it (except intervocalically in Linear B), but sister Indo-European languages sometimes attest the *y.
For clarification's sake, I might note that Latin has essentiailly five different verb conjugations; three of them are vocalic stems in long-A (first conjugation), long-E, (second conjugation) and long-I (fourth conjugation); the Latin third conjugation groups together two verb-types that are really quite different from each other: (a) consonant stems with a variable vowel (u/i <-- o/e) that correspond to Greek thematic verbs with a variable vowel (ο/ε), and (b) short-I vowel stems corresponding to the Greek yod/ι̯-stems (cap-io, cup-io, fug-io)

Re: ι̯

Posted: November 4th, 2011, 7:24 am
by Alex Hopkins
A few days ago Jonathan referred to Funk's grammar
Class III: Iota Class
359. Class III constitutes a large group of verbs which add ι̯ to the verb stem to form the present tense stem. ι̯ here is a semi-vowel and occasions certain phonetic changes. A rather large subclass consists of verbs with stems ending in δ: -δι̯ between vowels becomes ζ: the present stem will therefore end in a vowel followed by ζ, the variable vowel and personal ending joined to that, e.g. ἑτοιμάζω; verb stem ἑτοιμαζ-. In the other tense stems, δ before σ (future, aorist) and κ (perfect) disappears, δ before μ (perfect middle) and θ (aorist passive) becomes σ.
and asked,
Tell me about ι̯. Is this a theoretical construct that is useful to explain morphological patterns, or something that once existed in Greek?
I'm not sure if you have access to Carl Darling Buck's The Greek Dialects, where there's some information at #56 (p52), and in his Comparative Greek and Latin Grammar there is a particularly useful discussion at #360 (pp261-3) (and see also the previous section).

If you're interested but don't have easy access to these, let me know. There was a brief discussion of these things back in 2003, see http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b-gr ... 25889.html

Alex Hopkins
Melbourne, Australia

Re: ι̯

Posted: November 4th, 2011, 11:38 am
by George F Somsel
Jonathan Robie wrote:
Tell me about ι̯. Is this a theoretical construct that is useful to explain morphological patterns, or something that once existed in Greek?


See Smyth Greek Grammar §29, p 11.